Get Our Extension
Select Wikiz in another Language
DeutschEspañolFrançaisItaliano
Settings
A
A
Text Highlights
Notes/Citations
Edit on Wikipedia

Share This Article

About Wikiz About Us Cookies Policy Terms & Services Privacy Policy Contact Contact us Enjoying Wikipedia Content? DONATE TO WIKIPEDIA
Enjoying Wikipedia Content? DONATE TO WIKIPEDIA

Beach Pneumatic Transit

From Wikipedia, in a visual modern way
Beach Pneumatic Transit
WP Beach Pneumatic Transit.jpg
Photograph c.1873
Overview
OwnerBeach Pneumatic Transit Company
LocaleNew York City, United States
Termini
  • Warren Street and Broadway
  • Murray Street and Broadway
Stations1[note 1]
Service
TypeAtmospheric railway
Operator(s)Beach Pneumatic Transit Company
Rolling stock1 car
History
OpenedFebruary 26, 1870[1]
Closed1873[1]
Technical
Line length300 ft (90 m)[1]
Number of tracksSingle track
Route map
The plan of the Beach Pneumatic Transit station and tunnel.

The Beach Pneumatic Transit was the first attempt to build an underground public transit system in New York City. It was developed by Alfred Ely Beach in 1869 as a demonstration subway line running on pneumatic power. The subway line had one stop in the basement of the Rogers Peet Building and a one-car shuttle going back and forth. It was not a regular mode of transportation, and lasted from 1870 until 1873.

Discover more about Beach Pneumatic Transit related topics

New York City

New York City

New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over 300.46 square miles (778.2 km2), New York City is the most densely populated major city in the United States and more than twice as populous as Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city. New York City is located at the southern tip of New York State. It constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. by both population and urban area. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous megacities, and over 58 million people live within 250 mi (400 km) of the city. New York City is a global cultural, financial, entertainment, and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and life sciences, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, dining, art, fashion, and sports. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy, and is sometimes described as the capital of the world.

Alfred Ely Beach

Alfred Ely Beach

Alfred Ely Beach was an American inventor, publisher, and patent lawyer, born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is most known for his design of New York City's earliest subway predecessor, the Beach Pneumatic Transit. A member of the Union League of New York, he also patented a typewriter for the blind and a system for heating water with solar power.

Rogers Peet Building

Rogers Peet Building

The Rogers Peet Building is an eight-story building in the Civic Center and Tribeca neighborhoods of Manhattan, New York City. Built between 1898 and 1899, it replaced a five-story structure that was home to the Rogers Peet clothing store between 1863 and 1898, when the original structure burned down.

History

Broadway underground railway (1872) , New York
Broadway underground railway (1872) , New York

Alfred Ely Beach demonstrated a model of basic pneumatic subway system, in which air pressure in the tube pushed the cars, at the American Institute Exhibition in New York in 1867.[2] After demonstrating that the model was viable, in 1869 Beach and his Beach Pneumatic Transit Company began constructing a pneumatically powered subway line beneath Broadway. Funneled through a company he set up, Beach put up $350,000 of his own money to pay for the full-scale test project.[3] Built with a tunneling shield,[2] the tunnel was complete in only 58 days.[1] Its single tunnel, 300 feet (90 m) long, 8 feet (2.4 m) in diameter, was completed in 1870 and ran under Broadway from Warren Street to Murray Street.[2][4]

However, one of the city's top politicians of the day, William "Boss" Tweed, refused to support the project. With no initial political support for the project, Beach started the project by claiming he was building postal tubes. The initial permit was to install a pair of smaller postal tubes below Broadway; however, Tweed later amended the permit to allow the excavation of a single large tunnel, wherein the smaller tubes could reside.[5]: 12–13 [6] The exact location of the tubes was determined during construction by compass and survey as well as verified by driving jointed rods of iron up through the roof of the tunnel to the pavement.[7] The line was built as a demonstration of a pneumatic transit system, open to the public with a 25-cent fare per person.[2] Proceeds for the admission went to the Union Home and School for Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans.[8] It was planned to run about 5 miles (8 km) in total, to Central Park, if it were ever completed.[5]: 11 

For the public, the project was used as an attraction. It ran only a single car on its one-block-long track to a dead-end at its terminus, and passengers would simply ride out and back, to see what the proposed subway might be like. During its first two weeks of operation, the Beach Pneumatic Transit sold over 11,000 rides, and over 400,000 total rides in its single year of operation.[6][9][10] Although the public showed initial approval, Beach was delayed in getting permission to expand it due to official obstruction for various reasons. By the time he finally gained permission in 1873, public and financial support had waned, and the subway was closed down within the year.[10] The project was shut down when a stock market crash caused investors to withdraw support. It is unclear that such a system could have been practical for a large-scale subway network.[2][5]: 14 [11]

After the project was shut down, the tunnel entrance was sealed. The station, built in part of the basement of the Rogers Peet Building, was reclaimed for other uses until the entire building was lost to fire in 1898.[12] In 1912, workers excavating for the BMT Broadway Line (serving the present-day N, ​R, and ​W trains) dug into the old Beach tunnel, where they found the remains of the car, the tunnelling shield used during initial construction, and even the piano in the subway's waiting room.[2][10] The shield was removed and donated to Cornell University, which has since lost track of its whereabouts.[13] The tunnel was almost completely within the limits of the Broadway Line's City Hall station, but it is rumored that a small portion could still be accessed by a manhole on Reade Street.[14] The New-York Historical Society commissioned a plaque honoring Alfred Beach to be placed in the City Hall station.[3][6]

Although the Beach Pneumatic Transit lasted for only three years, the project gave rise to the New York pneumatic tube mail system, which was based on the request that Beach had made to Tweed and which ran until 1953.[5]: 14 

Discover more about History related topics

Broadway (Manhattan)

Broadway (Manhattan)

Broadway is a road in the U.S. state of New York. Broadway runs from State Street at Bowling Green for 13 mi (21 km) through the borough of Manhattan and 2 mi (3.2 km) through the Bronx, exiting north from New York City to run an additional 18 mi (29 km) through the Westchester County municipalities of Yonkers, Hastings-On-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington, and Tarrytown, and terminating north of Sleepy Hollow.

Alfred Ely Beach

Alfred Ely Beach

Alfred Ely Beach was an American inventor, publisher, and patent lawyer, born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is most known for his design of New York City's earliest subway predecessor, the Beach Pneumatic Transit. A member of the Union League of New York, he also patented a typewriter for the blind and a system for heating water with solar power.

American Institute of the City of New York

American Institute of the City of New York

The American Institute of the City of New York, or, The American Institute of the City of New York for the Encouragement of Science and Invention was a civic organization that existed from ca. 1828 – ca. 1980.

Pneumatic tube

Pneumatic tube

Pneumatic tubes are systems that propel cylindrical containers through networks of tubes by compressed air or by partial vacuum. They are used for transporting solid objects, as opposed to conventional pipelines which transport fluids. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, pneumatic tube networks gained acceptance in offices that needed to transport small, urgent packages, such as mail, other paperwork, or money, over relatively short distances, within a building or, at most, within a city. Some installations became quite complex, but have mostly been superseded. However, they have been further developed in the 21st century in places such as hospitals, to send blood samples and the like to clinical laboratories for analysis.

Central Park

Central Park

Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the fifth-largest park in the city, covering 843 acres (341 ha). It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated 42 million visitors annually as of 2016, and is the most filmed location in the world.

Panic of 1873

Panic of 1873

The Panic of 1873 was a financial crisis that triggered an economic depression in Europe and North America that lasted from 1873 to 1877 or 1879 in France and in Britain. In Britain, the Panic started two decades of stagnation known as the "Long Depression" that weakened the country's economic leadership. In the United States, the Panic was known as the "Great Depression" until the events of 1929 and the early 1930s set a new standard.

Rogers Peet Building

Rogers Peet Building

The Rogers Peet Building is an eight-story building in the Civic Center and Tribeca neighborhoods of Manhattan, New York City. Built between 1898 and 1899, it replaced a five-story structure that was home to the Rogers Peet clothing store between 1863 and 1898, when the original structure burned down.

BMT Broadway Line

BMT Broadway Line

The BMT Broadway Line is a rapid transit line of the B Division of the New York City Subway in Manhattan. As of November 2016, it is served by four services, all colored yellow: the N and ​Q trains on the express tracks and the R and ​W trains on the local tracks during weekdays. The line is often referred to as the "N and R", since those were the only services on the line from 1988 to 2001, when the Manhattan Bridge's southern tracks were closed for rebuilding. The Broadway Line was built to give the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company access to Midtown Manhattan.

N (New York City Subway service)

N (New York City Subway service)

The N Broadway Express is a rapid transit service in the B Division of the New York City Subway. Its route emblem, or "bullet," is colored yellow, since it uses the BMT Broadway Line in Manhattan.

R (New York City Subway service)

R (New York City Subway service)

The R Broadway/Fourth Avenue Local is a rapid transit service in the B Division of the New York City Subway. Its route emblem, or "bullet", is colored yellow since it uses the BMT Broadway Line in Manhattan.

Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is a private Ivy League statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. The university was founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White with the intention of teaching and making contributions in all fields of knowledge from the classics to the sciences and from the theoretical to the applied.

New-York Historical Society

New-York Historical Society

The New-York Historical Society is an American history museum and library in New York City, along Central Park West between 76th and 77th Streets, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The society was founded in 1804 as New York's first museum. It presents exhibitions, public programs, and research that explore the history of New York and the nation.

Design

Pneumatic Dispatch showing the tube pneumatic system
Pneumatic Dispatch showing the tube pneumatic system
Illustration of the interior of the pneumatic passenger-car, 1872
Illustration of the interior of the pneumatic passenger-car, 1872

Aesthetics

The ornate station had frescoes and easy chairs. It was illuminated by zirconia lamps that revealed the luxurious interior.[15] There were statues and a goldfish pond in the station that people could view while they waited to enter the ride.

Technical specifications

The car could hold 22 people,[16] and the riders would enter the site at Devlin's Clothing Store, a well-known shop at 260 Broadway, on the southwest corner of Warren Street.[8][17][18]

The ride was controlled by a 48-short-ton (44 t) Roots blower,[6] nicknamed "the Western Tornado", built by Roots Patent Force Rotary Blowers (see Roots Blower Company). When the car reached the end, baffles on the blower system were reversed, and the car was pulled back by the suction.[16]

For the tunnels, Beach used a circular design based upon Brunel's rectangular shield, which may represent the shift in design from rectangular to cylindrical. It was unclear when or who transitioned the tunneling shield design from rectangular to circular until The New York Times wrote an article describing the original Beach tunneling shield in 1870.[19]

Discover more about Design related topics

Rogers Peet Building

Rogers Peet Building

The Rogers Peet Building is an eight-story building in the Civic Center and Tribeca neighborhoods of Manhattan, New York City. Built between 1898 and 1899, it replaced a five-story structure that was home to the Rogers Peet clothing store between 1863 and 1898, when the original structure burned down.

Roots Blower Company

Roots Blower Company

The Roots Blower Company was an American engineering company based in Connersville, Indiana. It was founded in 1854 by the inventors Philander Higley Roots and Francis Marion Roots. It is notable for the Roots blower, a type of pump. Today, Roots blowers are mainly used as air pumps in superchargers for internal combustion engines; they were first used in blast furnaces to blow combustion air to melt iron.

Baffle (heat transfer)

Baffle (heat transfer)

Baffles are flow-directing or obstructing vanes or panels used to direct a flow of liquid or gas. It is used in some household stoves and in some industrial process vessels (tanks), such as shell and tube heat exchangers, chemical reactors, and static mixers.

The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times, also referred to as the Gray Lady, is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2022 to comprise 740,000 paid print subscribers, and 8.6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as The Daily. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company. The Times has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print, it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the United States. The newspaper is headquartered at The New York Times Building in Times Square, Manhattan.

Related developments

The Crystal Palace pneumatic railway was a similar but longer system which operated in 1864 on the grounds of the Crystal Palace in London.[20]

In pop culture

  • The Beach Pneumatic Transit is featured in the direct-to-video sequel An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island and serves as a plot point of the story.
  • "Sub-Rosa Subway" is a 1976 song by Klaatu which describes the subway's construction, station, and its public reception.
  • In the 1989 film Ghostbusters II, a fictional pneumatic transit station and tunnel reminiscent of the Beach system is discovered by the Ghostbusters beneath First Avenue in Manhattan; the tunnel's completion date appears on-screen as 1870, the same year that the Warren-to-Murray tunnel was completed.
  • In the 1990 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the abandoned subway tunnel they live in is in reference to the pneumatic transit.
  • The 2015 novel, Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray, (sequel to 2012's The Diviners) serves as a main plot point. The abandoned City Hall tunnel features heavily as a setting in both the real world and the dream world.

Discover more about In pop culture related topics

An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island

An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island

An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island is a 1998 American animated adventure film produced by Universal Cartoon Studios and directed by Larry Latham. It is the third film in the An American Tail series, the first to be released direct-to-video, and the first in the series to use digital ink and paint.

Sub-Rosa Subway

Sub-Rosa Subway

"Sub-Rosa Subway" is a song written by the Canadian rock band Klaatu, from their album 3:47 EST, describing the efforts of Alfred Ely Beach to create the Beach Pneumatic Transit, the New York City Subway's precursor. His work is described as secretive. The song peaked at No. 62 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1977.

Klaatu (band)

Klaatu (band)

Klaatu was a Canadian rock group formed in 1973 by the duo of John Woloschuk and Dee Long. They named themselves after an ambassador, Klaatu, from an extraterrestrial confederation who visits Earth with his companion robot Gort in the film The Day the Earth Stood Still. After recording two non-charting singles, the band added drummer Terry Draper to the line-up; this trio constituted Klaatu throughout the rest of the band's recording career.

Ghostbusters II

Ghostbusters II

Ghostbusters II is a 1989 American supernatural comedy film directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. The film stars Bill Murray, Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Ramis, Rick Moranis, Ernie Hudson, and Annie Potts. It is the sequel to the 1984 film Ghostbusters and the second film in the Ghostbusters franchise. Set five years after the events of the first film, the Ghostbusters have been sued and put out of business after the destruction caused during their battle with the deity Gozer. When a new paranormal threat emerges, the Ghostbusters reunite to combat it and save the world.

First Avenue (Manhattan)

First Avenue (Manhattan)

First Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan, running from Houston Street northbound to 127th Street. At 125th Street, most traffic continues onto the Willis Avenue Bridge over the Harlem River, which continues into the Bronx. South of Houston Street, the roadway continues as Allen Street south to Division Street. Traffic on First Avenue runs northbound (uptown) only.

Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state of New York. Located near the southern tip of New York State, Manhattan is based in the Eastern Time Zone and constitutes both the geographical and demographic center of the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass. Over 58 million people live within 250 miles of Manhattan, which serves as New York City’s economic and administrative center, cultural identifier, and the city’s historical birthplace. Residents of the outer boroughs of New York City often refer to Manhattan as "the city". Manhattan has been described as the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world, and hosts the United Nations headquarters. Manhattan also serves as the headquarters of the global art market, with numerous art galleries and auction houses collectively hosting half of the world’s art auctions.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990 film)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990 film)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a 1990 American superhero film directed by Steve Barron from a screenplay by Todd W. Langen and Bobby Herbeck. It is the first film adaptation of the comic book characters created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. It stars Judith Hoag and Elias Koteas with the voices of Brian Tochi, Robbie Rist, Corey Feldman, and Josh Pais.

Libba Bray

Libba Bray

Martha Elizabeth "Libba" Bray is an American writer of young adult novels including the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, Going Bovine, and The Diviners.

The Diviners (Bray novel)

The Diviners (Bray novel)

The Diviners is a 2012 young adult novel by Libba Bray. The book was published on September 18, 2012, by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and is set in New York City during the 1920s. The plot follows seventeen-year-old Evie O'Neill as she helps her uncle Will—curator of the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult—uncover the killer behind a mysterious series of murders.

Source: "Beach Pneumatic Transit", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, February 6th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit.

Enjoying Wikiz?

Enjoying Wikiz?

Get our FREE extension now!

Download Extension

Further Reading

New York City Subway

Independent Subway System

Dual Contracts

Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company

Alfred Ely Beach

Queensboro Plaza station

Borough Hall/Court Street station

History of the New York City Subway

DeKalb Avenue station (BMT lines)

34th Street–Herald Square station

23rd Street station (IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line)

Canal Street station (IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line)

Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Avenue/74th Street station

Broadway Junction station

Lexington Avenue/59th Street station

Canal Street station (New York City Subway)

List of New York City Subway stations in Manhattan
See also
References

Notes

  1. ^ The terminus at Murray Street was a dead-end, not a station

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d "www.nycsubway.org".
  2. ^ a b c d e f Santora, Marc (August 14, 2013). "When the New York City Subway Ran Without Rails". The New York Times.
  3. ^ a b "Inventor of the Week - Alfred Beach" (MIT)
  4. ^ Brennan, Joseph (2005). "They found the tube in excellent condition". Beach Pneumatic. Archived from the original on October 6, 2007. Retrieved January 17, 2008.
  5. ^ a b c d Diehl, Lorraine (2004). The Tracks that Built New York City. New York. ISBN 9781400052271.
  6. ^ a b c d "The remarkable pneumatic people mover" on Damn Interesting
  7. ^ "To excavate the Earth" Archived February 26, 2011, at the Wayback Machine (Columbia University)
  8. ^ a b "Beach Pneumatic Transit on capsu.org website". Archived from the original on July 19, 2011. Retrieved November 12, 2010.
  9. ^ "The Secret Subway" (PBS)
  10. ^ a b c Martin, Douglas (November 17, 1996). "Subway Planners' Lofty Ambitions Are Buried as Dead-End Curiosities". The New York Times. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  11. ^ "Beach Pneumatic Transit - The Interborough Rapid Transit subway" (plrog.org)
  12. ^ Barry, Keith (February 26, 2010). "Feb. 26, 1870: New York City Blows Subway Opportunity". Wired.
  13. ^ Worthington, George (December 12, 1912). "A Subway Relic". Electrical Review and Western Electrician. 61: 1137.
  14. ^ "Top 12 Secrets of the NYC Subway". Untapped Cities. April 10, 2019.
  15. ^ "The Pneumatic Mail Tubes" (USPS)
  16. ^ a b "Frederic Delaitre's Lost Subways / Beach Pneumatic Subway". sfr.fr.
  17. ^ "Alfred Ely Beach and NYC's First Subway". Archived from the original on May 9, 2013. Retrieved September 30, 2013.
  18. ^ "They found the tube in excellent condition" Archived October 6, 2007, at the Wayback Machine (Columbia University)
  19. ^ "www.nycsubway.org: Beach Pneumatic Transit". www.nycsubway.org. February 4, 1912. Retrieved January 2, 2019.
  20. ^ Delaitre, Frédéric (July 10, 2002). "Crystal Palace Atmospheric Railway". Lost Subways. Archived from the original on March 19, 2005. Retrieved January 17, 2008.

Further reading

"Pneumatic Transit" Animation by Abby Digital

External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Beach Pneumatic Transit.

Coordinates: 40°42′48″N 74°00′25″W / 40.71332°N 74.00701°W / 40.71332; -74.00701

Categories

The content of this page is based on the Wikipedia article written by contributors..
The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence & the media files are available under their respective licenses; additional terms may apply.
By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use & Privacy Policy.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization & is not affiliated to WikiZ.com.